The Scavenger, the Flyboy, and the Force
by The Griffinator
Summary: Since the Battle of Crait, Rey's been dividing her time between training to be a Jedi, learning how to pilot an X-wing, and resisting her budding attraction to Poe Dameron, the leader of her starfighter squadron. When she and Poe undertake a mission to find a crystal for Rey's new lightsaber, all three skill sets will be put to the test. -Set after The Last Jedi. TLJ spoilers.-
1. Chapter 1

The Force alerted Rey to his presence the moment she entered the fighter bay. She could sense him in the far starboard corner of the spacious chamber. She recognized him by the blazing confidence he radiated into the Force. This morning, she could sense a methodical, rote attentiveness. She knew without searching that he was working on his X-wing.

She clenched her fists in frustration. Poe was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. Rey couldn't see or sense anyone else in the bay. All she needed to do was avoid Poe. Hopefully she could prep her own X-wing for flight and be on her way before he even noticed.

Nine x-wings filled the bay, each bearing the star bird symbol of the New Rebellion. Hers sat in the far portside corner. She wound her way through the sleek spacecraft, barely allowing her sturdy boots to make a sound on the floor. The whirr of a bolt driver echoed from beneath Poe's X-wing. Good, he was still busy working.

Then a familiar electronic warble joined the bolt driver's whirr, and Rey sighed in frustration.

BB8 rolled over to her on his spherical body, chirping a cheerful morning greeting.

"Good morning to you too, BB8," she said wearily, smiling.

On the other side of the chamber, she saw Poe crawl out from under his starfighter and glance her direction. Even from this distance she could see his wide smile.

"Well, if it isn't Rey of Sunshine," he called. She grimaced in wry amusement. He'd started using the nickname after she joined his squadron and began racking up kills faster than anyone else, besides Poe himself. "Didn't expect to see you here so early."

"Just wanted to get a flight in before breakfast," she called back to him.

He wiped the grease from his hands on a cloth and tossed it aside before striding over to her.

"Another training run?" he asked. "You've already flown three of those in the past forty-eight hours. I think you can ease up on the throttle a little."

When he stepped directly in front of her, she felt her pulse quicken. She gritted her teeth and did her best not to allow his handsome face to unbalance her. She hadn't spend fifteen years fighting for survival on Jakku, followed by a several-day crash course in the ways of the Jedi, and then another month learning to fly an X-wing for real (instead of a simulation), only to be pathetically smitten by the first pretty face to show up.

But her new awareness of the Force didn't make things any easier. She was still getting used to the emotions and auras she could sometimes sense from other people. Poe exuded a confidence thicker than quicksand. Sometimes she felt like she would sink inside it and never emerge again.

"I need to keep up with the rest of you flyboys and flygirls," she replied.

The assumption that her flight was a training one came from Poe, but she recognized she hadn't corrected him, and the deception bothered her.

"Oh, I think you're doing a fine job at that, Rey of Sunshine," he said. He clapped her on the shoulder, and a jolt of excitement coursed through her. "But I understand. You've got a reputation to maintain." He raised an eyebrow. "Am I right? Huh? Huh?" He elbowed her playfully.

"At least I'm practicing, instead of spending all my time babying my ship," she teased, shoving his elbow.

He shrugged. "Some call it babying, others call it double-checking the important stuff so I don't wind up as a floating piece of debris."

The mood in the room became suddenly grim. Rey looked away, thinking of all the people they'd lost since the Battle of Crait.

"Anyway," Poe said, sounding uncomfortable, "if you're set on going on a training run right now, why don't I come with you?"

Normally Rey delighted in flying with Poe. She told herself her enjoyment came from the chance to hone her skills under the tutelage of the best pilot this side of Corellia. But today she had no time for training.

"I'll be fine, but thanks," she said.

BB8 beeped out his concerns.

"Yes, I promise I'll let BB10-2 know if I notice anything unusual on my scanners," she replied, referring to her BB unit who sat waiting for her in her X-wing along the wall.

"Actually, I was planning on doing some target practice of my own later today," Poe said. "I'll come with you, give you some healthy competition."

She smiled tightly. "I'm going solo for this one, Poe."

His dark eyes studied her with a glint of suspicion. "You've never minded me tagging along before."

"I just need to blow off some steam on my own today, all right?"

She turned and started walking toward her fighter craft.

BB8 beeped plaintively after her. She glanced at him over her shoulder. At first she wanted to be annoyed at his overprotectiveness, but warmth soon blossomed inside her. In the New Rebellion, she'd found the friendship and belonging she lived for years without. She gave Poe's droid her combo beckoning headshake and eye roll.

"Sure, you can help BB10-2 check my X-wing's diagnostics before I leave. Come on."

He chirped in smug satisfaction and rolled over to join her. Behind him, she couldn't help noticing Poe's intense stare.

...

He watched Rey walk across the bay to her X-wing. Like plotting a well-worn hyperspace route, his gaze traveled over her athletic frame beneath her flight suit. Powerful feelings ignited inside him, but like usual, he stifled them immediately. The leader of the New Rebellion's main fighter squadron couldn't afford the risk of crushing on a subordinate.

Subordinate. He chuckled to himself as he fished his datapad out of his flight suit pocket and switched it on. Fiery, independent, capable Rey could only be considered his subordinate when it came to piloting an X-wing, and lately that status was no longer so black and white thanks to the Jedi-in-training's rapidly increasing flight skills.

He told himself his protectiveness of Rey was no different than how he treated the other members of his squadron. Rey refused to let him accompany her today, but that didn't mean he couldn't double-check her training itinerary to rule out any dangers from the First Order.

To access the training logs, he had to navigate through the mission assignments for the day. He frowned when he saw Rey's name at the top of the list of items requesting his approval. His eyebrows rose when he saw the details of the mission.

He jogged across the room as Rey climbed into the cockpit of her fighter. His droid and hers continued their beeping conversation as he held the datapad in front of her.

"You sure about this training flight?" he asked. "Looks like you might have the details a little mixed up."

She bit her lip. "I was hoping you wouldn't notice until after I took off."

"Yeah, I bet you were," he said. "Because you know I'd never sign off on this."

Her expression hardened. "General Leia already gave her approval."

"Yeah, but in case things have changed a whole lot around here in the last couple hours, all missions involving deployment of New Rebellion fighters and bombers require my approval too."

"This is Jedi business, not New Rebellion."

He saw her continue her pre-flight procedure, and his annoyed concern began simmering into anger.

"Funny, doesn't look like a Jedi symbol plastered on the side of your ship," he snapped. He leaned in close, and for a moment his anger gave way to an acute awareness of how soft her skin looked. He visibly shook off the distraction with a jerk of his head. "When you asked to join my squadron, we agreed that New Rebellion concerns would take priority over Jedi training."

She glared at him. "I _volunteered_ to join. And Jedi training _is_ the New Rebellion's concern. They're part of the same thing."

The two BB units finished their conversation and swiveled their domes to regard the debate between their owners.

"Listen, I've allowed you plenty of shore leave to continue your training on your sacred island with the ghost of Skywalker." Wow, he couldn't believe how mentally deranged those words sounded. "But I am not letting you visit the wreckage of Starkiller Base. Not this soon."

She leaned in closer to him, and his heartrate increased. "In case you haven't noticed, I don't have a lightsaber. My last one split in half. Kyber crystals power the sabers, but they're almost impossible to find these days. Starkiller base was carved out of the carcass of llum, a planet held sacred by the Jedi during the Clone Wars because of all its kyber crystals. If I have any chance of finding a crystal for my new saber, it will be in the planet's debris."

She gave him a pleading look. "Poe, if I'm too stand any chance at defeating Kylo Ren when the time comes, I need a lightsaber. I've waited long enough. I need to do this."

He stepped back and folded his arms, fighting the desire to empathize. Feeling empathy could get you killed if you did it at the wrong time.

"How about a compromise?" he heard himself say, and a part of him listened eagerly to find out the rest. "You can go ahead with this, but I'm coming along as escort."

"I don't need an escort," she said. "I can handle myself."

"Kylo may be expecting you to do exactly what you're doing right now! The First Order could be waiting for you to show up. If you're going through with this, I'm coming along. End of discussion."

BB8 and his counterpart chirruped their opinions.

Poe grinned smugly. "See? They both agree with me."

Rey spouted a half sigh, half growl. "Fine. But I'm leaving in ten."

"I'll be ready in half," he assured her. He shook his head sardonically. "You're a real livewire sometimes, you know that, right?"

She smiled reservedly. "Look who's talking."

...

A short time later, two X-wings flew out of the New Rebellion's flagship and streaked into hyperspace.


	2. Chapter 2

The instant Poe's X-wing emerged from hyperspace, things got dicey. He juked to port to avoid colliding with a jagged chunk of metal twice the size of his ship. Off his starboard wing, he saw Rey's fighter dip below another huge, metallic asteroid.

"I thought we'd plotted an exit at a safe distance," he said. "Looks like I was wrong."

"BB10-2 and I plotted the coordinates," Rey said. "It's on us."

Her droid's apologetic warble vibrated over the communication frequency.

"Fine, fine. Focus now, apologize later," Poe said.

A vast field of metal and organic debris spread out before them. Most of it could only be detected using his ship's sensors. Some pieces drifted lazily along, while others zipped wildly through space, their momentum from the base's explosion remaining unhindered. He took a moment to stare in awe at the hundreds of blips on his X-wing's screen. Starkiller Base, once threatening enough to wipe out the entire New Republic fleet, now reduced to a sea of flotsam and junk.

"I'm taking point," Rey stated. "Follow me."

"You got it."

She pulled ahead, guiding her X-wing deftly among the floating hunks of wreckage. Immediately a huge wad of rocks, grass, and dirt zoomed straight for her. Poe's heart thundered and he swore, but Rey spun easily over the rocky missile like performing a cartwheel.

"Watch the language there, Flyboy," she said, and he could easily picture her face scrunching up in an adorable grin.

"I can't. There's too many other things to keep an eye on right now, and—oh boy watch out!"

Her fighter darted between two hulks of metal seconds before they smashed together and ricocheted in opposite directions. One of those directions happened to be straight at Poe, whose quick reflexes saved him from splatting on it like a bug on a ray shield.

"We're going to have lots of fun on this mission," he quipped into the intercom.

"Hey, you wanted be to go on a training mission," Rey replied. "You've got one. We'll both get lots of practice today."

"I'd prefer to get what you came for and get the hell out of here," he said.

BB8 quietly chirped his agreement.

Poe checked his scanners again. So far, he saw no signs of First Order activity, but space vessels could easily be hidden among the numerous, careening remains.

"Goes without saying, but keep your scanners on high alert," he said to his droid privately. "I've got a bad feeling about this buddy."

...

Rey did her best to still the anxiety welling within her.

Remain calm, focus, breathe. She repeated the mantra from Master Luke's training sessions over and over in her mind. He had taught her that her focus determined her reality. Currently, she needed to focus on the zigzagging minefield of wreckage, but she couldn't let it distract her from her ultimate goal: a kyber crystal.

Like so many times before, she let her awareness seep into her immediate surroundings until she felt like an extension of her ship, or her ship seemed an extension of _her._ Time and time again she sensed danger from hurtling debris seconds before impact and reacted accordingly. She didn't allow herself time to experience relief. Both Poe and Luke had taught her the importance of remaining in the moment, connecting utterly and intimately to the present.

Still, after nearly a standard hour, the muscles in her hands and arms began to tire of the constant, reactive tenseness.

More than a few times she'd spotted Poe's X-wing narrowly avoiding disaster. Unlike her, Poe possessed no deep connection to the Force, but he flew like he did. Yet Rey's stomach tightened whenever a junk asteroid almost smashed into him. Could she handle seeing him die on a mission she initiated?

Then she sensed it.

Like a flare of starlight in the Jakku sky, she detected the Force flashing off a crystalline surface approximately twenty meters to starboard. Excitement fluttering in her gut, she guided her craft toward the spot where her Force awareness congregated.

Soon her ship's lights illuminated a ten-meter-long island covered in dirt and trees. The trees stood withered and frozen from the coldness of space, She knew instantly that the kyber crystal lay nestled beneath the roots of one of the trees. However, the boughs of the tree held a surprise.

Ten gray objects with irregular edges sat crowded in the tree's branches. She slowed her X-wing's flight and narrowed her eyes at them.

"What've we got?" Poe asked over the intercom. Uneasiness prickled down her spine, and she found his voice comforting, reassuring. He guided his fighter close to her port wing.

"I'm not sure..."

BB10-2 and BB8 wailed out a warning simultaneously.

"Oh no," Rey breathed.

Suddenly the objects sprang to life. Triangular limbs unfolded, glowing eyes switched on, and ten miniature craft drifted in her direction.

"Droid starfighters!" Poe shouted, surprise evident in his voice. "Move to intercept!"

But Rey knew instinctively the true danger lay elsewhere.

"Scanners aft at 100 degrees!" she cried. "Five more contacts!"

The two pilots peeled apart in perfect unison, taking them straight into the path of the droid swarm's lasers, but saving them from the volley of weapons fire spraying from the second batch of droid starfighters attacking their vulnerable backsides. Rey had been so distracted by the enemies in the tree, she doubted she would have noticed the starfighters behind her without the aid of the Force.

"Never seen those things outside of a holo documentary or a museum!" Poe breathed heavily over the radio. "They're fast, and capable of seamlessly coordinating their tactics."

Pulse racing, Rey fired off a single shot that blasted a wing off the nearest enemy fighter and removed it from the fight.

"Guess it's a good thing we are too," she replied.

"Ha, when you're right, you're right!" Poe called as he blasted two more of the enemy.

Rey trailed swiftly behind five contacts. The droid craft soon adapted quickly to their opponents. Three jerked and spun nimbly out of Rey's scopes, while the remaining two dropped back and fired on her from behind. Her rear shields flickered under the assault from their weapons. She was so busy monitoring her shields, and juking left and right to avoid the attack, that she nearly crashed head-on into a ragged sphere of metal careening into her flightpath.

She gasped and pulled up sharply to avoid the collision. BB10-2 warbled his concerns.

"I know the odds aren't good," she called to him. "But we don't have a choice!"

He reminded her, in his typical passive-aggressive way, that he could begin calculating the jump to hyperspace now.

"No, not an option!" she told him. "We're not leaving without the kyber crystal!"

Two droid starfighters swarmed into the sights of her crosshairs, only to suddenly scatter. She recognized their intentional distraction nearly a second too late, but managed to spin clear of yet another hunk of debris at the last moment.

She comprehended the Force as her ally. Only her connection to it had kept her alive so far. She could register her surroundings like contacts on her scopes, but clearer, starker. Debris and droid starfighters alike triggered her instincts, her reflexes, and she responded, letting the will of the Force lead her through a dangerous dance amid the graveyard of Starkiller Base.

Yet Poe, without the aid of the Force connection, seemed to be fairing just as well as Rey. He looped, dove, rolled, and spun in easy pursuit of the droid starfighters, narrowly yet gracefully avoiding the wads of debris soaring across his flight path. Any time Rey allowed her attention to check on his status, she found herself both entranced by his sheer skill and horribly anxious for the split-second slip-up that could end his life.

A moment of doubt clouded her mind: Should she leave after all? Was this worth putting Poe's life at risk? She ground her teeth in frustration.

"Damn flyboy," she muttered. "I tried to tell him not to come."

"Poe," she said over the radio, "leave them to me. Fighting them in all this wreckage is too dangerous."

"Not a chance," Poe grunted. "I'm not leaving you to ten-to-one odds.

She sighted a droid ship in her crosshairs and fired her lasers, but the minute the energy discharges left her snub fighter the droid darted to safety.

"This engagement is taking too long," Poe said. "We should have cleared these guys out a long time ago."

"You're right," said Rey. She checked her chronometer and saw that the dogfight had been waged for nearly a half standard hour. "Even with the debris field, this should have been over by now."

She fired again, and once more, the droid ships dispersed the moment her lasers fired. How...?

Then she understood.

"The ships are communicating instantly with one another," she said. "They must be using some kind of-"

"Short ranged, closed frequency," Poe finished for her excitedly. "Make sense, but I've never heard of old tin cans like these using them. We can-"

"Poe!" Rey cried in alarm as she watched his X-wing clip a wad of cables sprouting from a metallic meteor and spun wildly into the path of another chunk of debris.

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. BB10-2's concerned wail joined the frantic squawk BB8 was transmitting over the radio.

At the last second, Poe righted his fighter and shot over the jagged hunk of rocks and dirt, scraping the belly of his ship on it.

Rey sighed in relief, and realized a second too late the cost of her distraction.

Seven droid starfighters converged behind her and concentrated their fire on her rear shields. Within seconds, the shields finally collapsed to a warning drone from BB10-2.

"Rey, your shields are gone!" Poe called. "It's time to get out of here. Calculate the jump!"

Rey's jaw muscles tightened, her hands clenched firmly over the flight sticks, and her teeth ground together. Sudden fury boiled within her, a fury she directed at the droid starfighters.

She cut her engines and immediately dropped behind the swarm, which parted effortlessly around her. She kicked her snub fighter to life again and zoomed after them. She lined one up in her sights and prepared to shoot.

Only this time, she did not pull the trigger immediately. Instead, she leaned into the Force. She used the fury inside her to heat her connection to the Force to frothing boil. The boil swelled outward and engulfed the droid starfighters in front of her. She dove into the scalding boil and felt the hotness of her fury scald her feelings, but she didn't withdraw.

Rather, she used the sharpness of the pain to hone in on the communication web between the droid ships. She focused on the strands of the frequency until they glowed like moonlight before her eyes.

Then she squeezed the trigger.

The moment her lasers shot out of her fighter, she saw a flash of light travel along the communication web between ships. She concentrated on the light, transforming it for a single moment into her entire reality, and listened to the mechanical, digital song it sang.

She followed the song's direction, juked her fighter portside in the blink of an eye, and fired off another series of laser blasts.

The lasers split open the droid starfighter seconds after it swerved to avoid her initial shot.

She didn't hesitate before repeating the tactic, centering another droid in her crosshairs and firing. Once more the communication web sent a message along its threads, and once more she read the message, jerked her ship, and blew apart the droid as soon as it obeyed the instructions from the web.

Fueled by the exhilaration of her success, she began hunting down the droid starfighters one by one.

She immersed herself completely in the boiling fury of her awareness. She tailed one droid group after another. When any of the enemy sang to another about an approaching piece of debris, she too reacted. Soon the droid starfighters were guiding her through the debris field, while all the while she gunned them down one at a time.

Messages radiated down the communication web, her lasers raged heartbeats later, and the entire time her X-wing swerved, dipped, dove, and dodged like an extension of her own body, using the warnings among the droid starfighters for guidance.

When she blasted the final droid enemy into shards, Rey slumped into her seat and gasped for air.

The only sound she could hear was her own breathing. Even BB10-2 remained silent.

Poe shattered the quiet with one slow, loud curse over the radio.

Rey grinned and laughed.

"You're one hell of a pilot, you know that?" Poe added jovially. She felt her cheeks flush at his praise. "Wow!"

Doing her best to resist the intoxication of his approval, Rey reached out with her feelings for the kyber crystal. She found it again within moments.

"All right BB10-2, get ready," she announced.

Extending her hand beside her instinctively, she pulled on the crystal using the Force. She watched its reflective form glint in the lights of her X-wing as it floated from under the roots of the withered tree and tumbled through the vacuum toward her starfighter.

BB10-2 chirped triumphantly once he snagged the crystal in one of his appendages.

"Nice work!" Rey said happily. A sense of true victory seeped into her muscles.

"All right Rey of Sunshine," said Poe, X-wing hovering above and behind hers. "You got the rock you came for, so let's lightspeed out of here."

"No arguments from..."

Rey's proximity alarms began blaring, and the BB units started wailing their warnings, seconds before a huge ship lanced into realspace on the closest edge of the debris field.

Rey studied the vessel. Its long body, the size of a cruiser, began at its wide aft section and swept grandly to a narrow, streamlined point. Odd bulbous attachments swelled from the sides of its front half.

"Who are they?" Rey commented. "They don't look like First Order. Do you recognize them?"

"I do," Poe stated, and the calm dread in his voice could have chilled Rey's blood. "Ever heard of the Chiss?"

Rey's brow furrowed. "No..."

"We need to get out of here," Poe said. "Now."

* * *

 **Author's Note: Thanks for all the reviews and the favorites, guys! I hope you're enjoying the story. I'll try to add new chapters at least every other Sunday. Thanks for reading!**


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